Eto Tells Of Payoffs To Mobsters

December 03, 1991|By John O`Brien.

Former Chicago rackets figure Ken Eto, who survived what the FBI described as a botched mob assassination, on Monday provided federal prosecutors` most explosive testimony yet in the trial of reputed mobsters Ernest Rocco Infelice and Louis Marino.

Eto, who survived three gunshot wounds to the head in 1983, testified that he paid protection money to Infelice and Marino, who are accused of running a mob ``street crew`` linked to gambling, extortion and murder in the city and several northern suburbs.

Eto, appearing under guard in the courtroom of Judge Ann Williams, said, in reply to questions, that he paid protection money, or ``street taxes`` to the two reputed mobsters.

``Yes, I did,`` Eto said. ``Five thousand a month. Usually (paid) in the first week of the month. In person. Cash. One-hundred-dollar bills.``

Eto gave his testimony during one of his rare appearances as a federal witness in a Chicago courtroom.

Since the attempt on his life, a failing for which two suspected triggermen paid with their own lives, he has been relocated by the government and given a new identity.

Infelice, 69, of River Forest, and Marino, 58, of Palos Heights, were among his friends in the mob, Eto said.

They and three other men on trial are charged with racketeering in the operation of city-suburban gambling businesses and conspiracy in the slayings of two independent bookmakers. The trial is now in its sixth week.

In return for his payoffs, about $50,000 in all, the ``outfit,`` as Eto called the mob, allowed him to run a variety of gambling businesses, ranging from bets on ethnic Chinese and Puerto Rican games to American-style card games, horse races and sports events.

Eto, 72, appeared relaxed as he calmly recounted his 40 years as a member of the Chicago mob, beginning with his arrival in the city in the mid-1940s.

It ended abruptly on a winter`s night in 1983. That`s when he was shot-apparently in the mistaken belief he`d become an informant-at point-blank range by two men he identified as John Gattuso and Jasper Campise. Their corpses were found later in the trunk of a car in Naperville.

Eto testified that when he complained police raids in Chicago were making his life miserable, cutting his ability to make money and pay the mob, too, he said Infelice provided a sure solution.

``Go to Lake County,`` Eto quoted the defendant as telling him in 1982.

When asked to explain, he told Assistant U.S. Atty. David Buvinger,

``Anywhere in Lake County, it belonged to them (the street crew).``

Eto said he stayed put because shifting his games north would have been

``too far`` for his clientele to travel.

Eto explained that he when he paid ``street taxes`` in the early 1980s, he did so with Infelice and Marino. He said they had been designated to receive the money by reputed mob bosses Vince Solano and Joseph Ferriola.

``Vince (Solano) asked me if I could pay $5,000 a month. I said, `Yes,`

and he told me to give the money to Rocky (Infelice). Louie Marino would call me and set a date and time`` at a West Side restaurant. ``Usually, Rocky and Louie would come together, and I would pass the money under the table.``

Solano, a Chicago official of the Laborers International Union, is not on trial. Eto has previously testified that Solano was the person who had ordered his execution. Ferriola is now dead.

Eto acknowledged that gambling was his specialty, particularly in the Rush Street area, but said it wasn`t his only vice.

When police raids and losses threatened to leave him insolvent, he said he turned to his mob ``protectors`` for money to get the games going again. Failing that, he said he wanted permission to open a nightclub featuring strip-tease dancers in suburban Lyons. He got neither.

Eto said that after he sent word he wanted to start the vice den, ``I was turned down.`` He said Infelice gave him the bad news, but was sympathetic and said it was out of his hands.

``Don`t feel bad that you got turned down,`` he said Infelice told him. He said Infelice mentioned that he, too, had broached similar plans to unnamed mob bosses but had been told no.